Interpreting the report of I-526 Approved Petitions Awaiting Visa Final Priority Dates

Quarterly reports at the USCIS Citizenship and Immigration Data page include a confusing report titled “Form I-140, I-360, I-526 Approved EB Petitions Awaiting Visa Final Priority Dates.” I’ll explain how I interpret this report.

I added yellow underlining to the screenshot to highlight key interpretive clues. The data refers to “approved” I-526/E petitions only (not to all filed or pending petitions). It does not cover all approved petitions, but only the subset of approved petitions that are defined as “awaiting visa availability.” And “awaiting visa availability” is defined with reference to a given monthly visa bulletin Final Action Dates chart.

Therefore, to interpret the USCIS report, I turn first to the referenced Visa Bulletin (June 2025, according to Note 6 in the report) and I check the EB-5 Unreserved Chart A dates that month: January 22, 2014 for China, and May 1, 2019 for India. I then interpret the USCIS report to say: “We have approved 30,313 I-526 for 5^th Unreserved China investors who have priority dates later than January 22, 2014. We have approved 755 I-526 for 5^th Unreserved India investors who have priority dates later than May 1, 2019. Since these priority dates are later than the final action date in the visa bulletin, the cut-off for visa availability, the assumption is that these approved investors don’t have LPR status yet and are still awaiting visa availability. (We’re overlooking the complication that the June 2025 Visa Bulletin retrogressed, so it happens that some approved investors with these priority dates used to be current and thus could’ve already received visas. We are also, by definition, not counting investors who are waiting for visas but whose I-526 we have not approved yet.)”

Compare to the March 2025 USCIS report, which referenced the March 2025 Visa Bulletin to define the cutoff for visa availability.

EB-5 Unreserved Chart A dates in the March 2025 Visa Bulletin were July 15, 2016 for China, and January 1, 2022 for India. I then interpret the March 2025 USCIS report to say: “We have approved 12,117 I-526 for 5^th Unreserved China-born investors who have priority dates later than July 15, 2016. We have approved 116 I-526 for 5^th Unreserved India investors who have priority dates later than January 1, 2022. We’re not the agency that issues visas but we’re offering the data that we do have – for I-526 approvals — as a hint at the number of petitioners who may still be awaiting visa availability. We are overlooking the complication that in practice approved investors with priority dates BEFORE the visa bulletin final action date may also not have visas yet for for one reason or another. And by definition we’re not counting still-pending I-526, and not counting spouses or children.”

USCIS report numbers between March 2025 and June 2025 are so very different primarily because the two reports are counting a different subset of petition approvals, as defined by different visa bulletin dates. “I-526 approvals for priority dates since June 2016” is a smaller segment than “I-526 approvals for priority dates since January 2014.” A bit of adjudication activity between measurements adds to the difference, but basically the two reports are measuring different things. It’s not that the China backlog abruptly increased in three months from 12,117 to 30,313. The USCIS report numbers are not referring to a total backlog at all, but very specifically to different date-defined segments of approved I-526.

The USCIS report is confusing partly due to the disconnect with what the public wants. The public wants to know how many EB-5 applicants are still waiting for visas. It’s impossible to derive that information from this USCIS report, despite its enticing title. The report simply gives limited information for a segment of the backlog – principals not dependents, approved petitions not pending petitions, and only those approved petitions after a specified Visa Bulletin cut-off date. Furthermore, I judge it impossible that this report actually excludes petitions on behalf of individuals that have obtained LPR status, as Note 8 claims. USCIS isn’t the visa-issuing agency, and how would USCIS know who all of their approved I-526 petitioners went on to LPR? I guess that USCIS has no ready way to judge who exactly is “awaiting visa availability,” except to simply look at a current visa bulletin and take that as a definition of which priority dates might not have visas yet. Finally, the USCIS report numbers make sense when interpreted as a number of I-526 approvals within certain dates (compared against other data for I-526 filings for the same dates and approval volumes), and don’t match up if one expects them to represent still-pending applicants (compared against data for actual pending visa applicants and visa issuance).  30,000 is a plausible number for total I-526 approvals for China Unreserved with priority dates after January 2014, considering about 43,000 China I-526 filed from January 2014 to March 2022. It is not plausible as a number of China-born principal Unreserved applicants still waiting for visas as of 2025, considering that Chinese investors with PD later than January 2014 have in fact been getting visas since 2016, per previous visa bulletins, and data reports showed just over 33,000 total Chinese applicants (principals plus spouses and children) registered at NVC and on pending I-485 as of mid 2024.

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